Traffic on State Highway One north of Wellington has ground to a standstill after a serious crash between a car and a van.<\/p>\n
Motorists have reported huge delays after the southbound lane was closed between the Tawa off-ramp and Glenside on-ramp.<\/p>\n
In a social media post update at 8.05pm NZTA said the Serious Crash Unit was undertaking an investigation, which required the road to remain closed to southbound travellers for a few more hours.<\/p>\n
The agency advised southbound motorist to avoid travelling on SH1.<\/p>\n
One driver has been stuck in traffic for three hours and told RNZ “people seem to be panicking and trying to drive up the shoulder”.<\/p>\n
“They are trying to cut each other off. Seems pointless because no one is moving.”<\/p>\n
Emergency services attended the scene where two vehicles crashed about 4.40pm.<\/p>\n
Another person who contacted RNZ said she had watched around 20 people, including some with toddlers, walk along the motorway and crossing over the median barrier into oncoming traffic.<\/p>\n
She criticised the lack of information from police: “As someone who unknowingly entered the onramp at Porirua at 5.15pm, with no police blocking the onramp, I have sat in my car since then.”<\/p>\n
“An update from Police, via the media would be a relief for some, to know that it could be another hour or two before moving.”<\/p>\n
In an earlier press release, police said one person had serious injuries from the crash.<\/p>\n
Police advised motorists to avoid the area and expect delays.<\/p>\n
Do you know more? Email news@rnz.co.nz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Traffic on State Highway One north of Wellington has ground to a standstill after a serious crash between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":485208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-485207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/485208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}